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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the way-of-the-dodo dept.

My ad-supported Kindle's buttons are dying, so I'm in the market for a new eBook reader. I figured the upcoming sales would be a good time to buy one. To my surprise, eBook readers seem to be regressing rather than advancing. My hard requirements are:

  1. e-Ink display
  2. Text-to-speech
  3. Don't need company's software to transfer books

And my preferred features include:

  1. Good PDF support (so a larger display with the same aspect ratio of a piece of paper). I want to read technical books on it, something I can't do with the Kindle.
  2. Stable software
  3. Doesn't spy on everything you do (Kindles track absolutely everything)
  4. Support for multiple voices. The same voice gets annoying after a few books.

I'm unable to find anything which fulfills all those conditions. Any recommendations? Before you say smartphone, it needs an e-Ink display. Are smartphones and tablets killing eBook readers?


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:59PM (#431185)

    e-Ink display
    Text-to-speech

    Why do you need text-to-speech AND an e-Ink display? If your vision is bad enough that you need text-to-speech, the e-Ink display is pointless.

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  • (Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:04PM

    by Kilo110 (2853) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:04PM (#431187)

    Maybe he likes listening to it while driving?

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:10PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:10PM (#431188)

    Its a punch list for features, old kindles had speech but they removed it. Supposedly it could sync the speech to the page, so you could listen to a chapter in your car, then read in the waiting room where the audio was paused. I'm not sure it got a lot of use.

    • (Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:00PM

      by Kilo110 (2853) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:00PM (#431205)

      I tried using it for a little while. But I got sick of the robotic text to speech very quickly. I just stick with normal human voiced audiobooks. I suspect most others made the same decision

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:06PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:06PM (#431244)

        I had a similar experience a decade or two ago, I downloaded project gutenberg texts and tried to pipe them thru linux text to speech at the time, then play the mp3 files in my car, it was theoretically understandable but unusable for more than five minutes or so. I never used text to speech on kindle I always assumed it was bundling audible human read books at an additional fee, but I guess not. That must have sounded awful.

        That experiment led to the followup of trying to practice morse code by piping gutenberg texts thru a text to morse code mp3 utility and play those in my car. Rather than give me hours of practice per week while commuting it mostly made me tune out after 15 minutes or so. Still, theoretically, an interesting way to "read" a text.

        Some see e-readers as a dead end product much like dedicated portable mp3 players. I checked wikipedia and I bought a diamond rio a little more than 18 years ago when it was first released. Doesn't seem that long ago. I still have it somewhere. Only programmable via a printer port dongle, kinda weird. Used a single AA battery, had to, because it was competing with Sony Minidisks which also ran on a single AA.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:28PM (#431306)

          It's my understanding that if you got your book from Amazon, and Amazon/Audible has a human-read audiobook of that book, and you're willing to pay extra for it, then Kindle lets you listen to it synced with the Kindle, so you can alternately read a passage and listen to a passage, and never lose your place. If there is no audiobook, or you don't pay extra for it, or you didn't get the ebook from Amazon in the first place, then you get to enjoy the goodlife experience, listening to stories as read by the bad machines.

    • (Score: 2) by Celestial on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:17PM

      by Celestial (4891) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:17PM (#431216) Journal

      Yep. IIRC, very few people used the text-to-speech feature so the few remaining eReader manufacturers (mostly Amazon and Kobo) decided that it wasn't worth it. That, and some conspiracy theorists speculate that audiobook publishers pressured eReader manufacturers to drop it, but erm... good luck pressuring Amazon. However, there was some push back so Amazon decided to appease by making the text-to-speech accessory.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:15PM

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:15PM (#431289) Journal

        That, and some conspiracy theorists speculate that audiobook publishers pressured eReader manufacturers to drop it, but erm... good luck pressuring Amazon.

        Umm, the Authors Guild actually DID pressure Amazon -- you can still read their statement here [authorsguild.org]. encouraging authors to restrict their rights on the argument that the text-to-speech option was "creating a derivative work" which would be subject to separate copyright protection. (There are loads of other interviews and statements from authors at that time, if you poke around the internet.)

        Amazon subsequently DID cave to that pressure [theguardian.com], basically making it "optional" for authors to allow text-to-speech or not. Presumably Amazon's lawyers must have determined they could have a legitimate legal claim for this, or else Amazon wouldn't have backed down.

        That was in 2009; Amazon ultimately dropped the feature in 2012. I imagine it was some combination of factors you mention (few people used it, extra cost) combined with the ongoing nonsense with the publishers (some of whom restricted text-to-speech rights wide swaths of books, which Amazon was required to enforce).

        In any case, it isn't really "conspiracy theorists" who "speculate" about this stuff. There was pressure; it did have an effect. How much of an effect it had on Amazon ultimately dropping the feature completely -- well, Amazon never made a statement on why it did so. I agree with you that it's probably a variety of factors.

        • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:47PM

          by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:47PM (#431324) Journal

          Oh, I'd also note Amazon released the Kindle Fire in 2011, and the Fire HD in 2012. Note that the original Fire did NOT have TTS, but Amazon subsequently enabled it. Thus, it seems most likely that Amazon banked on the fact that those few users who wanted audio would buy their new product line (which supported audio, full-color video, etc.), while they could make the old Kindles cheaper and less bulky without any audio support.

        • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday November 22 2016, @07:34PM

          by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @07:34PM (#431433)

          Presumably Amazon's lawyers must have determined they could have a legitimate legal claim for [the text-to-speech option..."creating a derivative work" which would be subject to separate copyright protection], or else Amazon wouldn't have backed down.

          Either that or they decided that the litigation could get drawn out to the point that litigation became more expensive than the feature was worth.

          --
          If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:53PM

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:53PM (#431237)
      And yet Echo (Alexa) can read Amazon ebooks (not talking about audiobooks, actual T2S from Kindle books). She sounds weird reading technical books but it works. I hope they put it back in their readers at some point.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:11PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:11PM (#431249)

        Alexa does all her thinking back home in the cloud so the network costs, both financial and battery power, would be an issue for ebook readers.

        One interesting anecdote is according to marketing ebooks are only read by hot women at the beach where there's no or limited connectivity and power, although I mostly read in my house like on the couch or in bed to wind down before I sleep and theres no limit to connectivity and electric power at home.

        Alexa does have a nice voice, though. I don't think we're far from radio news readers and DJs being disposed of and replaced with robots. It'll take awhile for the CGI visual arts to replace TV actors and TV newsreaders.

        • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:20PM

          by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:20PM (#431252)
          I meant that I hope they put the T2S feature back in their readers. They pulled it a while back not for technical reasons, but there were grumblings from authors and publishers over it not being licensed as audiobooks. Silly BS but still, if they feel like they can have Alexa do it, hopefully they can get around to adding the feature they used to have built into the readers back.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @05:06PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @05:06PM (#431336)

          > One interesting anecdote is according to marketing ebooks are only read by hot women at the beach

          "According to marketing"

          WTF?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:00PM (#431241)

    TTS because I like to listen to books while I'm doing chores around the house and while eating meals. e-Ink because the reading experience is far better than LCD screens and I have DSPS (a sleep disorder) so night-time light levels are an important issue for me. I guess I might end up with separate devices, but it's nice to have TTS instead of a mp3 because a lot of books have pictures or names that TTS screws up. When there's a TTS issue or a table in the book, you can glance at the screen and continue. If you converted the book to mp3 then you lose that information.